Possible NFBC Cutline Championship In 2014

[ToddZ]

What if the draft had a lesser number of roster spots and then you can FAAB players until you reach a limit, then each pick-up requires a drop?

I haven't been following the actual numbers, but (making this up for illustrative purposes) draft 35 and have a max roster of 45, so your first 10 FAAB additions are drop-free (as an example).

Or whatever numbers work.

[Money]

When you get into the nitty gritty of spring training you are giving up a whole night of draft prep and spring training analysis.

However from an NFBC players perspective once I get my draft picks for the ME or Super there's no way I can give up a night drafting for 4 hours.

Steve, I never realized you took this stuff so seriously.

[ReedBTLines]

Correct. This is not a contest where you play to win money in the league prizes; we have a lot of contests at $125 and $150 where you can do that. This is a contest that hopefully we can grow the grand prize to $100,000+ with a low entry fee and large participation. Surviving the "cutline" in the playoffs and having that thrill of winning the grand prize is the lure of this contest and the bigger the carrot we can get the more popular it will become. At least that's the hope here. Again, this is not your normal contest where you get ROI from league prizes; it's all about the overall prizes and it won't be for everyone, which is okay.

Fair enough. Thanks.

[Quahogs]

I have some observations.

Why locked into 10 teams? Is the yahoo/espn crowd the quarry here? Faster league fill? To me 12 would present a more relevant ADP and season league team construct . Which is what's driving KJ's vision of this.

45 rds ? Way too long for a quick hit draft every couple of days league.

If you average 30 seconds a pick for 450 picks you are looking at a 3hr 45min draft. Drafts could conceivable take 4 hours. If I know I'm sitting down at 8EST and not finishing until midnight... When you get into the nitty gritty of spring training you are giving up a whole night of draft prep and spring training analysis.

The football cutline fit seemlessly into the "season long" draft fabric. They were quick (26rds) and could be done a day before or even same day as a Prime or Classic. However from an NFBC players perspective once I get my draft picks for the ME or Super there's no way I can give up a night drafting for 4 hours. The information flow is too much of a constant in baseball as compared to football.

Maybe this current setup 10tms 45 rds appeals to an unknown quantity out there. But for a player like myself a 4hour draft during the heightened spring training season has little appeal.

You are absolutely correct Steve: Football worked perfectly with 10 teams, 26 rounds as those were easy 2 hour nightly drafts. That's why we did 185 leagues in less than 60 days. We all know that baseball can't duplicate that unless we lower the starting roster size, so is there a formula here that works in 3 hours or less? Only your idea of 30 spots and all stats count comes close to that, but with only 3 FAAB periods that leaves teams with a lot of zeros.

These won't be 4-hour drafts because our 15-team, 30-round drafts all finish in 3 hours or 3:15, but your point is well taken. It's tough in baseball to find that happy medium, but we'll keep trying. I haven't given up on this yet.

There are two directions you can take:

1)Create a daily game/season long hybrid - point driven, 25 player roster, all play with 1 fixer faab where teams are going to have to deal with taking 0's

2)OR a traditional NFBC style league transitioned into a cutline contest similar enough where drafts are used as prep for the bigger leagues.

I personally want 15 of contest 1. Drafts are under two hours and can probably set my auto draft (utilizing my pre ranked players) to do it for me. Contest 2's effort trumps the cutline novelty to me so the interest there would be minimal.

[uky]

What if the draft had a lesser number of roster spots and then you can FAAB players until you reach a limit, then each pick-up requires a drop?

I haven't been following the actual numbers, but (making this up for illustrative purposes) draft 35 and have a max roster of 45, so your first 10 FAAB additions are drop-free (as an example).

Or whatever numbers work.

I think I like this idea, but the most prepared drafters probably won't.

[Greg Ambrosius]

What if the draft had a lesser number of roster spots and then you can FAAB players until you reach a limit, then each pick-up requires a drop?

I haven't been following the actual numbers, but (making this up for illustrative purposes) draft 35 and have a max roster of 45, so your first 10 FAAB additions are drop-free (as an example).

Or whatever numbers work.

Or do you draft 30 players (23 starters and 7 reserves) and then as you say find a unique way to expand your roster to 45 players BEFORE Opening Day via FAAB or some form of slow draft/pickups. Not a bad suggestion Todd, but I'd almost say to do this before Opening Day to complete full rosters. Just a thought.

This way you have 30-round drafts in 2 hours 15 minutes and a chance to still go 450 players deep. Just an idea.

[Quahogs]

When you get into the nitty gritty of spring training you are giving up a whole night of draft prep and spring training analysis.

However from an NFBC players perspective once I get my draft picks for the ME or Super there's no way I can give up a night drafting for 4 hours.

Steve, I never realized you took this stuff so seriously.

Ha Joe, I get my lunch handed to me regularly even when maxing out prep. I could only imagine the slaughter if I took a cavalier approach ! lol

[KJ Duke]

And should the scoring mirror NFBC style values with only our 10 categories, or is Todd onto something with points for everything like doubles, triples, walks, etc.? Some have already said that 6 points for a SB seems too high, whereas others say that adding categories outside of the NFBC's core 10 stats will make it tougher for NFBC vets to sign up. I'm interested in the feedback there, especially with daily games scoring more than just the 10 Roto categories. What works best if we do go with a points scoring system?

As for ADPs, we can have those just for this game easily and this year we'll be able to break down contests into last 7 days, last 14 days, last 21 days, etc. for each ADP listing. So this one would have its own ADPs as I see it. Does that help at all?

All of the player prep and projections I do are for roto scoring. Having a points-game driven by the same categories fits nicely with that. Daily-style scoring creates the need to look at a lot of additional categories and calls for a brand new draft sheet. Players that walk a lot or hit a lot of doubles have to be moved up, low OBP guys moved down, etc. That's a lot of extra work for a low-priced side game for me, and more importantly the drafts lose a lot of relevance as prep for my primary leagues. ADPs won't mean anything, except for other cutline drafts.

[uky]

Eventually, we're going to have to confirm the number of teams and rounds. I like the 10 team 45 round proposal. How about doing a 40 round draft with the first FAAB period the Sunday prior to the first games played. This FAAB period you CAN fill your roster to 45.

[KJ Duke]

I have some observations.

Why locked into 10 teams? Is the yahoo/espn crowd the quarry here? Faster league fill? To me 12 would present a more relevant ADP and season league team construct .

45 rds ? Way too long for a quick hit draft every couple of days league.

If you average 30 seconds a pick for 450 picks you are looking at a 3hr 45min draft.

The cutline brand has been establsihed in football as a 10-tm league. It's different, leagues fill faster and there's less wait time between your picks so it's faster action. Could it be 12? Sure, but is 12 better than 10 for a contest in which one team gets paid? From a game play standpoint I don't care if it's 10 or 12, but I don't think going to 12 teams helps grow the contest and might slow it for the reasons stated.

45 rounds sounds long, but it's the length of a standard 30-rd draft. Picks do not average 30 seconds in regular leagues, and they'll average even less in these leagues. I drafted 14 football cutline leagues, they flew because the stakes are low and most of the sign-ups had the same idea in mind - I've got a few hours to kill so I'll jump into a quick-hit draft. I think you're scaring yourself with that mythical 4-hour number. If a regular 15-team takes 3:00-3:15 as Greg stated, I'd bet most of these leagues finish in 2:30-3:00 (20-24 seconds per pick). And if you auto-draft your last few rounds you can be outta there in 2 hours.

[mbendar16]

by Greg Ambrosius » Fri Oct 25, 2013 2:48 pm
You are absolutely correct Steve: Football worked perfectly with 10 teams, 26 rounds as those were easy 2 hour nightly drafts. That's why we did 185 leagues in less than 60 days. We all know that baseball can't duplicate that unless we lower the starting roster size, so is there a formula here that works in 3 hours or less? Only your idea of 30 spots and all stats count comes close to that, but with only 3 FAAB periods that leaves teams with a lot of zeros.

These won't be 4-hour drafts because our 15-team, 30-round drafts all finish in 3 hours or 3:15, but your point is well taken. It's tough in baseball to find that happy medium, but we'll keep trying. I haven't given up on this yet.


I think the key to getting a reasonable draft time is the clock, which could be made much lower for this than other formats. How about a 45 second clock, which would likely have the average pick made in less than 30 seconds? If that doesn't work (or even if it does), I'll copy off the other comments in the thread if the intention is to make this NFBC related/lower stakes prep contest or its own separate format. There are a lot of comments on injuries on here and definitely relevant, but the fact that the reserves of a 10 team contest will be starters instead of bench players provides more capable backups and the ability for a lower total roster size of 35-40 without high risk of zeroes. The 3 FAAB periods lowers that risk further.

[Quahogs]

KJ, they flew because they were 26 rounds. That and the football drafting thought process is WAY more streamlined - talent gone by rd 9. 10-12 find some handcuffs. 13-15 get backup QB. 16-20 backup to the backups. 21-26 krs and def. Even an easy choice takes 30 seconds from the time "you're on the clock", search and load, visual check, hit draft button.

Baseball has way more depth than football and the decision tree is more complicated. I think you're really underestimating how long a 45rd baseball draft will take.

[KJ Duke]

Eventually, we're going to have to confirm the number of teams and rounds. I like the 10 team 45 round proposal. How about doing a 40 round draft with the first FAAB period the Sunday prior to the first games played. This FAAB period you CAN fill your roster to 45.

Each round should take 3-4 minutes, so going 40 rounds would save 15-20 minutes in draft time.

Just for perspective, stopping at 35 rounds (350 players) would be the equivalent of stopping a 30-rd draft as soon as everyone had filled their starting lineup of 23 players - that's an awfully shallow draft.

Going to 40 rounds would be like having less than 3 players on your bench in a 15-teamer. Spending the extra 15 minutes of draft time and having a full 45-man roster might outweigh the programming trouble and rule complication/explanation of having a special faab period with no drops and an expanding bench, but if STATS wanted to re-program the faab setup to do this, 40 rounds could be sufficient for the first few weeks.

[KJ Duke]

KJ, they flew because they were 26 rounds. That and the football drafting thought process is WAY more streamlined - talent gone by rd 9. 10-12 find some handcuffs. 13-15 get backup QB. 16-20 backup to the backups. 21-26 krs and def. Even an easy choice takes 30 seconds from the time "you're on the clock", search and load, visual check, hit draft button.

Baseball has way more depth than football and the decision tree is more complicated. I think you're really underestimating how long a 45rd baseball draft will take.

The time per pick was notably faster in the cutlines than the 12 and 14s that I did. People simply made faster picks in the cutlines.

Agreed that baseball is more complicated, but this contest would be simplified versus standard baseball drafts since we don't have to worry about category balance. All signs point to a faster per-pick draft than standard drafts (category balance, quick-hit mentality, lower stakes), and if Greg is correct that standard 450-player drafts average 3:00-3:30, you are far-overestimating the time these drafts will take.

[Quahogs]

If we're not adhering to category balance then what kind of value prep are these drafts adding ? If not much then why are you holding firm to a 450 drafted player pool - just so the totals equal a 30 rd 15 tm draft ?

Football cutline worked because the drafts were 2 hours. A 9pm EST draft was over a little after 11. Truthfully a 3hr 15 minute draft is too long for me to frequently bang out. Don't lose sight of what made the FFOC tick. People could easily bang out 2 drafts in an evening/night.

[KJ Duke]

Taking some of the ideas posted above:
• 40-round draft
• 5 expansion slots for FAAB
• 45-second clock

That should get average draft times down to 2hrs - 2:15.

Thinking about the programming complication, could be an easy fix. Set the league up with 45 roster slots from the beginning, add 5 players to each team's bench named "expansion player 1, 2, etc", or whatever. When doing FAAB you click on one of those players as your drop until they are used up so you don't have to re-program faab with special rules.

[KJ Duke]

If we're not adhering to category balance then what kind of value prep are these drafts adding ?

Because if you believe pitcher A is worth more than pitcher B in a cutline, the same would apply to standard lges. The positional rank would remain the same, and the relative value across positions would be close. Team construction and strategy would have a small impact on ADP in terms of do I have enough SBs vs HRs and the like, and having positions backed up, but in terms of "does the marketplace prefer Player A to Player B, and by how much?", I think you could see 90-95% relevance for cutline ADPs and standard lges.

... why are you holding firm to a 450 drafted player pool - just so the totals equal a 30 rd 15 tm draft ?

45 rounds gives you a view into the entire standard league player pool, which I like. It could be shortened some as suggested above if draft time is enemy #1. I would speed up the clock before I would drop below 40 rounds because below 40 you're getting into very shallow waters.

[mbendar16]

I think 40 total rounds would be the best compromise to this format as well as prep for bigger leagues. I think a reasonable assumption is that new players would go from 10 team format to 12 team before 15. 10 to 15 is a big leap, and at 40 rounds, would give a complete picture of a standard 12 team draft, with a little extra for those that want to go from 10 to 15 teams and all of us that use these drafts as a prep tool for our more important leagues.

[Greg Ambrosius]

Steve is right that one of the lures of the NFFC Cutline Championship was having that daily fix available to you if you wanted it for a 2 hour commitment. In fact, the vast majority of our NFFC Cutline Championship leagues filled on the day of the draft and sometimes an hour or less before the start time. People would get their draft picks a few hours or minutes before the draft, know it would fill and be ready to draft. Two hours later, the draft was complete and you learned the player pool quickly and still had a fun shot at a $50,000 grand prize. Swift and easy.

Most of our starting times for football were at 9 pm ET. You could tell that the East Coast guys liked settling in after work and doing a draft from 9 to 11 pm ET. So how can we duplicate that in baseball because I really do believe that during the cold winter months there would be demand for a quick baseball fix at night if it lasts 2 hours or 2 hours and 30 minutes? How do we make a nightly draft available with an affordable price, a simple time commitment and yet a fun format? Steve is onto something here in the way we build this.

* Fewer rounds has to be part of the equation
* Adding players via FAAB before Week 1 allows us to expand rosters after Draft Day
* Best Ball makes in-season management very easy
* Points scoring needs to be figured out yet if we go this way. This is very important to this contest succeeding.
* The Cutline playoff portion still needs some fine-tuning and it won't be the rush we have each week in football, but I think we can make this fun and exciting.

Interesting discussion today. I'm not sure if we're closer or farther from an answer here!!

[KJ Duke]

Looking at the schedule, one thing that's cool about the timing of this - the final weekend of the contest looks like it will fall on week 1 of the NFL schedule, so a lot of us will be in Vegas and can watch "the cutline" live on Sunday to see who wins the $50k. Put that up on the big screens Greg!

[Greg Ambrosius]

Looking at the schedule, one thing that's cool about the timing of this - the final weekend of the contest looks like it will fall on week 1 of the NFL schedule, so a lot of us will be in Vegas and can watch "the cutline" live on Sunday to see who wins the $50k. Put that up on the big screens Greg!

We could have the Cutline Live Standings page up on a screen all weekend long. Easy to do!!

[BK METS]

In my opinion, drafting this style draft and drafting a main event draft will be completely different. I have not heard brought up a minimum innings limit for pitchers, unless I am missing something. There will be countless numbers of strategies, without the worry of punting a category, since points are points and whatever way you get them, doesn't matter. Is it best player available? Do you go with a pure speed guy as early, with this scoring method, as you would in the Main Event? I don't think so. Billy Hamilton, in my mind, might have less value here since there isn't the burden to fill every category and he doesn't put up much else other than steals, so his points value is not significantly higher than a guy that does a little of everything. Same goes with relief pitchers and say I want to build a staff of relief pitchers... I don't have to punt a category, so I can start a setup guy or several innings eaters. I believe the setup man, pitches multiple innings and who strikes guys out, will have more value in this scoring, than he would in the Main Event, unless you specifically have an innings limit.

Other thoughts.. Since the season is shorter and emphasis would be on making it to the cutline playoffs, would a guy who is hurt for the beginning part of the season, be as valuable here as in the Main Event?

There is more work here than is realized, that will adjust draft strategies.

[KJ Duke]

Alan, draft strategy will certainly be different, but overall player values won't change much.

In terms of your middle reliever example versus that of a closer or starter - the point design is such that relative values should be consistent ... now, draft strategies may change based on perception or mis-perception, but the value of a player's contribution given "X" as projected stats, will not.

Quibbling over whether or not ADPs will be perfect (of course they won't) is nitpicky. ADPs are never perfect anyway; perceived player values change from one day to the next throughout draft season, and from draft to draft because one league has a different owner pool than another. But there is enough relevance here that this will be valuable prep work to flesh out reasonably good player market values.

A one-category guy like Billy Hamilton you may have to adjust for, so sometimes you may have to use your brain in addition to ADPs!

[BK METS]

Alan, draft strategy will certainly be different, but overall player values won't change much.

In terms of your middle reliever example versus that of a closer or starter - the point design is such that relative values should be consistent ... now, draft strategies may change based on perception or mis-perception, but the value of a player's contribution given "X" as projected stats, will not.

Quibbling over whether or not ADPs will be perfect (of course they won't) is nitpicky. ADPs are never perfect anyway; perceived player values change from one day to the next throughout draft season, and from draft to draft because one league has a different owner pool than another. But there is enough relevance here that this will be valuable prep work to flesh out reasonably good player market values.

A one-category guy like Billy Hamilton you may have to adjust for, so sometimes you may have to use your brain in addition to ADPs!

The reason I brought it up was not to question ADPs or the concept at all. I am sure KJ and Greg will come up with something that makes everyone happy. I was thinking more about the length and preparation, and whether 450 players, straight through, in one night, is a smart idea. Draft strategy will be adjusted from the DCs, where for the most part, these are slow drafts. I was able to do the express DCs last year with my eyes closed, since I had already drafted other slow draft DC's with the same prep. There will not be that kind of practice with the cutline. I suppose, for those of you that do many of these drafts, it will be easier as you draft in multiple cutlines, but for the guy buying one team, I think the disadvantage is there for not completely understanding the rules... I think shortening the amount of rounds would be the prudent way to go, and using the idea I believe Todd had, and add players later, to fill the roster.

[low talkers]

The fact that there are 4 pages of replies here in 18 hours proves that this is a great idea, and that current NFBCers will play. Likely, the less the time commitment, the more we'll play.
I think the key to getting new players in is making it easy to understand and easy to play. 45 rounds is too much for someone coming from espn or CBS 10team leagues. We don't want a new player to jump in and be overwhelmed, we want them to feel like they are stepping up to the big leagues, but that they have a chance to compete. It can work with either a basic points scoring, or roto, those are both common enough leagues. If doing points, the simpler better, meaning fewer categories to get points from.
A new player should be able to read the rules in 2-3 minutes and understand exactly what they are getting into, how to play, and how they can win.